Spiffy:

Iffy:

We haven't seen the campaign map yet; time will tell if a game with this broad of a scope can remain focused and fun.

In 1813 the German town of Leipzig was the scene of one of the most decisive (and largest) battles in Europe prior to World War I. It was here that Napoleon suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of a European coalition, an event commemorated with a massive monument located just outside the city today. It's fitting, then, that Creative Assembly chose the Leipzig Games Convention as the place to unveil the land-based combat in the spectacularly promising sequel Empire: Total War. The new game aims to recreate the explosive tension of imperial warfare, complete with musket volleys, cavalry charges, artillery, and bayonet rushes.

We already saw the naval warfare part of the game at last month's E3 summit, and here at Leipzig we were delighted to discover that the ground combat has just as much attention to detail. Uniforms are realistically modeled and individual soldiers have some variation in their gear, which gets progressively dirtier through combat. Cavalry troops sit astride various breeds of horses with different colorings. You can zoom all the way in and watch individual soldiers go through the required steps to load a musket, biting into the paper cartridges, ramming the charge into the barrel, etc.

At last month's demo Creative Assembly promised that soldiers engaged in a close fight would have matched combat animations. Sure enough, it was impressive to watch two soldiers clanging their muskets together, stabbing and snarling while combat raged all around. Even more impressive was when a cavalry officer joined the fray, leaning to one side to slash down at opponents while they dodged his blows and tried to dismount him. The cavalry officer's head looked down and pivoted to follow his target as he circled his prey. The graphics really serve to bring the harshness of Napoleonic battles to life. We watched a British flag carrier lead a line of redcoated infantry into battle, boldly vaulting over a wall and into the thick of an enemy position. Surrounded by enemies, we saw that he was reaching for his sword when his foes brought him down. Mechanically, the loss of a flag carrier means that his unit takes a morale hit, but somehow the game mechanics seemed secondary to the drama unfolding on the battlefield.

Using Terrain to Your Advantage

Of course zooming in close enough to see the whites of your enemy's eyes is a luxury in the midst of combat. You're more often paying attention to the battlefield as a whole, which is important in Empire: Total War, as the battlefields are a whole lot bigger. In our demo (centered appropriately enough around the town of Leipzig), the city itself was a relatively small portion of the map. The fields and hedgerows surrounding the city were the scene of the initial skirmishes, along with one or two smaller villages outside of the city proper.